STTR Phase I: Nanocomposite Films by Cylindrical Magnetron Sputtering

这个小企业技术转让第一阶段项目将开发纳米复合薄膜材料和耐磨涂层应用的沉积方法。 据报道，纳米复合材料的硬度超过金刚石，并且预计比超晶格和其他最近几代的摩擦涂层更容易生产。 硬度和热稳定性的系统，如钼/氮化钛将建模。 我们将使用反应共溅射来合成这些复合材料，并将它们的物理性能与计算值进行比较。圆柱形磁控溅射被选择用于这项工作，因为易于组装具有各种材料成分的靶，并且因为圆柱形磁控溅射提供沉积到通常需要耐磨涂层的复杂形状上的优点。 耐磨涂层广泛用于切削和成型工具以及生物医学、航空航天、汽车和其他应用。 目前，刀具涂层的价值每年超过10亿美元，其他用途预计在几年内每年将达到30亿至50亿美元。客户已经很容易地采用了几代新材料，这一趋势表明，纳米复合材料可以迅速占领市场的重要份额。

This Small Business Technology Transfer Phase I project will develop nano-composite thin film materials and deposition methods for wear resistant coating applications. Nano-composites have been reported with hardnesses exceeding that of diamond and are expected to be easier to produce than superlattices and other recent generations of tribological coatings. The hardness and thermal stability of systems such asmolybdenum/titanium nitride will be modeled. We will use reactive co-sputtering to synthesize these composites and their physical properties will be compared to calculated values. Cylindrical magnetron sputtering has been chosen for this work because of the ease of assembling targets with various material compositions and because of the advantages cylindrical magnetron sputtering offers for depositing onto the complex shapes that often require wear resistand coatings. Wear resistant coatings are widely used on cutting and forming tools as well as in biomedical, aerospace, automotive and other applications. The value of coatings on cutting tools presently exceeds $1billion annually and other uses are expected to reach $3 billion to $5 billion annually within a few years. Customers have readily adopted several new generations of materials and that trend suggests that nano-composites could capture a significant share of the market quickly.